7 Odd But True Facts From June 16

If you, like me, enjoy learning new things, you may enjoy reading these seven surprising facts that happened in history on June 16th.

1816 – Best Slumber Party Ever! During a stormy weekend, poet and author Lord Byron reads Fantasmagoriana to his four house guests at the Villa Diodati: poet Percy Blysse Shelley, his young wife Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and John Polidori. The atmosphere and storm  inspireByron to challenge each guest to write a ghost story. This resulted  in Mary Shelley writing a story that would become the novel Frankenstein; John Polidori writing the short story The Vampyre; and Byron writing the poem Darkness.

1858 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers his now-famous House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois.

1897 – A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed; the "Republic" would be dissolved a year later.

1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated.

1911 – International Business Machines (IBM) is first founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York.

       1977 – Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, Calif. as Software Development Laboratories (SDL) by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates.

       1981 –  U.S. President Ronald Reagan awards the Congressional Gold Medal to Ken Taylor, Canada's former ambassador to Iran, for helping six Americans escape from Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-1981. Taylor is the first foreign citizen honored with this award. His actions were memorialized in the award-winning film "Argo" starring Ben Affleck. 

Images courtesy of Library of Congress and public domain.

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